1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of microelectronics, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for improving the data throughput over a cellular network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The cell phone industry is undergoing exponential growth, not only in this country, but all over the world. In fact, it is well known that the over twenty percent of the adult population in the United States do not even have a traditional landline telephone. In addition to those who do not own a conventional telephone, nearly ninety percent of the adult population owns a wireless phone.
And the usage of cell phones is increasing as well over the use of traditional landline telephone coverage. In fact, one in seven adults now uses only cell phones. Whereas in the past cell phones were used when a landline was not available or under emergency conditions, lower carrier rates, affordability of family packages, and free mobile-to-mobile or friend-to-friend promotions have fostered in significant increases in usage. It is not uncommon today to walk into any public forum or facility and notice a majority of the people there talking on their cell phones.
The ability to communicate using a mobile phone, or mobile station, has been available since the middle of the last century. However, during the 1990's so-called “2G” or second generation mobile phone systems were provided that began the growth in both deployment and usage that we currently enjoy today. These initial systems predominately provided for the routing and reliable servicing of voice calls between parties. And, as one skilled in the art will appreciate, there are a number of timing and latency requirements associated with transmission and reception of voice data in order to maintain quality of service.
And although wireless cellular network technologies have continued to provide improvements related to the ability to process voice calls, there has also been an enormous pull on the industry to provide improvements related to the processing of data as well as voice. It is not uncommon today to find many cell phone users who not only place voice calls over a cellular network, but who also check their email, send text messages, and browse the internet.
Accordingly, a number of technologies are under development to improve the quality and throughput of data. These so-called “3G” or third generation cellular communications technologies are highly optimized for the reliable transfer of packet data instead of voice data. Hence, 3G data protocols such as EDGE® and EV-DO technologies are not generally characterized as modulation techniques, but more so by performance metrics (e.g., 5 Megabits per second throughput). And this is because although a given data connection must be guaranteed some minimal level of latency and throughput, the timing required to transfer data such as a text message pales in comparison to that required to transfer voice information.
The above noted technologies for increasing throughput notwithstanding, the demands for data transfer continue to grow with cell phones now being used to transfer real time data related to audio and video. Consequently, network providers are looking for ways to leverage existing infrastructures while at the same time providing for orders of magnitude in increases in data throughput and user capacity.
Accordingly, the present inventors have noted the inefficiencies associated with the utilization of code division multiple access (CDMA) based data networks such as EDGE® and EV-DO® to process both non-real time data and delay sensitive data such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP) data, as well as other types of data.
Accordingly, what is needed is a technique that enables a CDMA-base cellular data network to process increasing amounts of data while at the same time maximizing the use of existing infrastructure.
In addition, what is needed is an apparatus and method for increasing the capacity of an existing CDMA-based data protocol in order to maximize the data transfer rate.
What is also needed is a mechanism for processing packetized data over a cellular data network that takes advantage of the unused bandwidth of an existing data network, but which also is compatible with legacy cellular devices.